What other leagues will be pulled?

[FleetWalker]

Originally Posted by pauwoo

Did you call your league [league redacted]? Did you use the TM'd team names and logos, historical or otherwise, from the ***?

I used the real league name and real team names, and as a result the program found the associated logo files (which was the point). This was to avoid having to come up with my own names & logos for 12 teams in one league in 20+ league universe. The league structure was the same also. Those were the only points in common with actual entity, and those names were copied and pasted from the web. So yeah, it fell within the ambit of the licenses at issue, but no more so than Blue Devils or any other team name not covered.

As people have pointed out, the patch is looking for name matches and then scrambling user data if it finds them. That principal could very easily be extended to NCAA properties, Premier League Properties, NFL Properties, etc... At this point it almost certainly would HAVE to be extended to those properties if any of those entities come calling, and it might be done preemptively to avoid having them come calling.

I'm surprised OOTP hasn't already removed the ability to use Indians from any team name. It seems like the next logical step in this process given MLB's expressed wishes on the issue.

[pauwoo]

Originally Posted by FleetWalker

I used the real league name and real team names, and as a result the program found the associated logo files (which was the point). This was to avoid having to come up with my own names & logos for 12 teams in one league in 20+ league universe. The league structure was the same also. Those were the only points in common with actual entity, and those names were copied and pasted from the web. So yeah, it fell within the ambit of the licenses at issue, but no more so than Blue Devils or any other team name not covered.

As people have pointed out, the patch is looking for name matches and then scrambling user data if it finds them. That principal could very easily be extended to NCAA properties, Premier League Properties, NFL Properties, etc... At this point it almost certainly would HAVE to be extended to those properties if any of those entities come calling, and it might be done preemptively to avoid having them come calling.

I'm surprised OOTP hasn't already removed the ability to use Indians from any team name. It seems like the next logical step in this process given MLB's expressed wishes on the issue.

I'm sorry you lost all the work you put into that save. Sucks. As to the bit about extending to other properties - NCAA, PL, NFL, etc... no TM or copyright claim coud be made that OOTP is profiting from your usage of that data as they didn't sell you a software package that included it. They did sell you a software package that included it for ***, and a claim can (and was) made that they are profiting from that without the right to do so.

And the bit about the Indians team name is not logical at all. The MLB and Cleveland have a right to enforce conditions upon the licenses they grant. But 'Indians' as a team name is not something they can enforce. Trademark law will protect your brand and identity, but not the underlying format or ideas...

[Cryomaniac]

The simple point is that [a certain league] can never be included or modded into the game ever again. It is what it is, and we can't change that. Maybe in 25 years Markus will be richer than Konami and can outbid them for the rights. But until then suck it up, because there aren't any alternatives.

Whether this will end up affecting which rules are available in the game is a different question, but I doubt it. I don't think the league in question is the only one to use ties, for example.

I think logos and team names for fictional leagues might end up being more restricted though, ignoring the actual team names from the affected league.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by FleetWalker

I used the real league name and real team names, and as a result the program found the associated logo files (which was the point). This was to avoid having to come up with my own names & logos for 12 teams in one league in 20+ league universe. The league structure was the same also. Those were the only points in common with actual entity, and those names were copied and pasted from the web. So yeah, it fell within the ambit of the licenses at issue, but no more so than Blue Devils or any other team name not covered.

As people have pointed out, the patch is looking for name matches and then scrambling user data if it finds them. That principal could very easily be extended to NCAA properties, Premier League Properties, NFL Properties, etc... At this point it almost certainly would HAVE to be extended to those properties if any of those entities come calling, and it might be done preemptively to avoid having them come calling.

I'm surprised OOTP hasn't already removed the ability to use Indians from any team name. It seems like the next logical step in this process given MLB's expressed wishes on the issue.

Not really, no. American courts have maintained that sports stats aren’t subject to copyright and that end users who change the names of teams and players to match real life do not cause the parent company to become liable. Japanese law is apparently different - again, see the history of Konami vs FM, a franchise owned by a far larger business than Com2Us - and so different things hold. I in fact would be surprised if any other country where baseball is played a lot is going to have anything near as bad as what Konami demands.

[Kobeck]

Originally Posted by Rain King

That process literally gave them permission.

This whole thing sucks, sure, but this is a very inexpensive game for what it provides and obviously the OOTP team got backed into some kind of legal corner here and did what they had to do.

This is neither the catastrophe nor the violation it is being made out to be.

Hopefully, y'all can gain some perspective soon.

no crap... I totally know that...



just cause something is legal to do dont mean someone should do it




Its perfectly legal for me to stop by the liquor store and buy a gallon of whiskey every night and get drunk as a skunk in front of my wife and children... just cause that is legal dont mean I should do it cause it is immoral.


OOTP choose to nurf MY data

[Kobeck]

Originally Posted by itsmb8

This sucks, but I have the fastspring version so I'm just not gonna download the latest patch and live with it. And just save money and not buy OOTP until I can ensure my save wont get F'ed up. Removing the names of Nippon and the teams, idc. Ill just mod them back in anyways. But randomizing player names, removing Japan as a country and making the players all South African or whatever? THAT is where I draw the line because THAT is something you cannot undo.

So congrats OOTP, your doubt decision is costing yourself at least one sale from someone who has bought the last decade of iterations. And im sure Im not alone.

yep


I mean I am just 1 customer... but I have supported this company for 20 years or more. Been buying and playing games my entire life ( yes going back to TRS80 and cassettes - LOL) I have never encountered this malevolent behavior from a trusted entity before - never

[tehsuigi]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

Whether this will end up affecting which rules are available in the game is a different question, but I doubt it. I don't think the league in question is the only one to use ties, for example.

I think logos and team names for fictional leagues might end up being more restricted though, ignoring the actual team names from the affected league.

Most of the rules that [LEAGUE REDACTED] employs, like ties, foreign player limits, posting system, and non-escalating arbitration, are also used in the KBO. Heck, that's the only reason why ties were coded into the game in the first place, because for years we heard it wasn't feasible.

The fictional name restriction is an interesting idea, but runs into issues. For example, two of the three major pro teams named Giants are licensed for the game - the third isn't. Same for Tigers. Would you stop someone from using Giants or Tigers in their fictional game?

[Kobeck]

Originally Posted by baseballgoat

the issue becomes guys who play the game like i do, we spend weeks, if not months fine tuning all the leagues around the world to our tastes and now we can't ever trust 100% that all the work is safe from being nuked on a whim

this!

[Kobeck]

Originally Posted by tm1681

And that's tricky, but even then as long as none of the other leagues in the game become part of something akin to an iron-clad exclusivity agreement with a company that's notably litigious the rest of the in-game world should be able to continue on as it is.

In a way, I'm surprised it's taken them this long to run into a situation like this. The game that I do part-time work on, Football Manager, hasn't even been available for purchase in Brazil since 2017 because the football sector of that country is so famously lawsuit-hungry that the people who publish the game decided it would literally be easier to just stop doing business in the country, even via digital download.

100% sidebar here: my apologies but I am curious


Brazil is soccer mad... how do they obtain FM???


use vpn or something???

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by Kobeck

this!

Yep…not to mention that some people just prefer a full universe. For many (including myself) it’s just going to be a real turnoff and result in apathy towards the game, modding, and/or projects.

[Kobeck]

Originally Posted by pauwoo

I disagree that this is exactly what happened... As I said, "It seems here that Konami/*** could claim that, by virtue of this data, structure, etc being included in the base game, that even a custom, fictional database could be cause for a liable claim because nearly every detail for *** was included in the base game - the rules, including ties recently, structure, etc and was usable in the fictional creation flow as a template." To me it's that Konami/*** could make a solid claim against OOTP/COM2US because of that and that they are known as the type of draconian company that would do it based on what people have shared about their dealings with Sports Interactive and others.

I.E. They have grounds, and a means to show, that it got there because OOTP provided it. What will be interesting to me is that if this sort of thing happens in OOTP24... I.E. once *** is not included in any version of the release either as a template or playable real world league, with team, player data, etc, would OOTP/COM2US still be compelled to scramble end user data - I don't think they will.

OOTP has shown exactly who and what they are... of course they will nurff your data... its what OOTP does

[FuzzyRussianHat]

Originally Posted by tehsuigi

Most of the rules that [LEAGUE REDACTED] employs, like ties, foreign player limits, posting system, and non-escalating arbitration, are also used in the KBO. Heck, that's the only reason why ties were coded into the game in the first place, because for years we heard it wasn't feasible.

The fictional name restriction is an interesting idea, but runs into issues. For example, two of the three major pro teams named Giants are licensed for the game - the third isn't. Same for Tigers. Would you stop someone from using Giants or Tigers in their fictional game?

Yeah I think this scrambling thing was something they had to just piece together something on short notice because of the pressure and I would guess simply keeping any [redacted] content in future releases and scrubbing the boards of related mods would be what they do for OOTP 24. Trying to scramble existing games in the future with other patches perpetually seems unlikely and unfeasible (and would cause even more of an uproar from players than this one-off solution did).

I don't see how you could really keep dedicated people from creating their own fictional/alternate Japanese leagues unless you straight up disallowed any customization whatsoever, which would be another can of worms entirely.

I'm surprised OOTP hasn't already removed the ability to use Indians from any team name. It seems like the next logical step in this process given MLB's expressed wishes on the issue.

Considering the AAA Indianapolis Indians still exist, that would be impossible. Not sure if any other minor league teams still have that. I'm not on 23 but I'm guessing minor league teams named Indians (some because they're Cleveland affiliates) aren't changed in historical mode?

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by tehsuigi

Most of the rules that [LEAGUE REDACTED] employs, like ties, foreign player limits, posting system, and non-escalating arbitration, are also used in the KBO. Heck, that's the only reason why ties were coded into the game in the first place, because for years we heard it wasn't feasible.

The fictional name restriction is an interesting idea, but runs into issues. For example, two of the three major pro teams named Giants are licensed for the game - the third isn't. Same for Tigers. Would you stop someone from using Giants or Tigers in their fictional game?

Those names are generic enough that you wouldn't be able to restrict them completely, but you could easily restrict the use of it for a team based in New York, say (as they already have for the third city). I was thinking along the lines of Blue Devils, as the person who mentioned the NCAA said.

[pauwoo]

deleted

[Kobeck]

deleted

[4maddux_cy's]

Originally Posted by FuzzyRussianHat

Yeah I think this scrambling thing was something they had to just piece together something on short notice because of the pressure and I would guess simply keeping any [redacted] content in future releases and scrubbing the boards of related mods would be what they do for OOTP 24. Trying to scramble existing games in the future with other patches perpetually seems unlikely and unfeasible (and would cause even more of an uproar from players than this one-off solution did).

I don't see how you could really keep dedicated people from creating their own fictional/alternate Japanese leagues unless you straight up disallowed any customization whatsoever, which would be another can of worms entirely.




Considering the AAA Indianapolis Indians still exist, that would be impossible. Not sure if any other minor league teams still have that. I'm not on 23 but I'm guessing minor league teams named Indians (some because they're Cleveland affiliates) aren't changed in historical mode?

Spokane is still the Indians.

[jimz]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Not really, no. American courts have maintained that sports stats aren’t subject to copyright and that end users who change the names of teams and players to match real life do not cause the parent company to become liable. Japanese law is apparently different - again, see the history of Konami vs FM, a franchise owned by a far larger business than Com2Us - and so different things hold. I in fact would be surprised if any other country where baseball is played a lot is going to have anything near as bad as what Konami demands.

SI is also a subsidiary of Sega, another Japanese company. Sega would have a hard time to not avail themselves to Japanese law.

The real issue here is that the patch affects saved games that contains not only parts of the saved games that are not subject to copyright (data, as you mentioned), but also derivative/new creative creations made by individual players who purchased the game. That's like if Bic wins a trademark claim and then orders the infringer to destroy all works created by pens falsely marketed as Bic. Of course, it's much harder to actually accomplish that IRL than digitally, but just because you can doesn't make it suddenly okay, or even legal. I live in the 9th Circuit where not only are derivative, transformative works of copyrighted works protected, but are actually not legally considered as infringing but as a preemptive carve out that changes the burden of proof so that the defendant would not need to admit first to the infringement and then claim an affirmative defense - which is inherently a weak position since the defense requires admission of conduct - and instead the presumption is that the works are not infringing unless the claim of infringement is specifically made. In that case, claims of infringement would need to be made to players/creators.

Also, OOTPD/Com2Us doesn't even have standing to enforce either the copyright of the creative work or any trademarks used without permission - because what they're trying to enforce is necessarily not their property/right in the first place if they need to enforce said right at all. So in a bizarre way, depending on what actually gets scrambled and to what extent (also recognizing that one does not need to use the game to create modifications to the database that would then be actually original work of the player, full stop), it's possible (although extremely unlikely to ever make it in front of a judge) to see the scenario where instead of righting some wrong, they managed to just permanently damage/destroy works protected under American law, to which they had no right to enforce any action no matter what.

And yeah, it's totally insane law school hypothetical land when we get there, except from what I can tell, the patch is modifying players generated independent of the original db who ends up in the league over there, at least in my saves. Suppose that I had spent a few hundred hours adding some fantasy fictional universe of the future that's built on top of the original db that contains some sort of coherent, intentional work. The Japanese court can order but cannot enforce an order that violates the law of another nation, and it would also make little sense for the party who by virtue of enforcement acknowledges their lack of ownership to the infringed right to then enforce the right they never had. The scrambling of data and not just the removal of marks further makes me think that the claim here goes beyond just trademark infringement and involves copyright somehow. I just have a hard time imagining how any court would make the remedy to an infringement, which is already an assertion of a right that the party do not possess, literally the assertion x god knows how many copies they sold of said right which they don't have. Either there's no right, or there is a right and there's no enforcement. You can't have no right and enforcement of said nonexistent right.

Anyway, the weirdest thing is that the devs seem to be punishing their customers in a way that doesn't lessen the devs' liability but only goes to piss off a ton of people. That... just feels dumb, you know?

[Syd Thrift]

Do they? I'd love to see someone who actually understands Japanese copyright law, because it sure as hell looks like they do. I don't believe FM even sells its product in Japan so whether Sega is a Japanese company or not doesn't really pertain to the issue of standing. If another country says standing exists inside of their borders if one person can theoretically acquire the game by any means, it's not like the US can tell them to stop and be less stupid.

I really wish someone from within OOTP would speak about this but also understand if they can't, like for instance if the threat of a lawsuit is still hanging over them and they are unsure if the (yes, draconian) steps they've taken will be enough to satisfy a company who, had they raised this issue in the US, I'm near positive would be nothing more than a vexatious litigant. I hate being kept in the dark about this kind of thing.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I really wish someone from within OOTP would speak about this but also understand if they can't, like for instance if the threat of a lawsuit is still hanging over them and they are unsure if the (yes, draconian) steps they've taken will be enough to satisfy a company who, had they raised this issue in the US, I'm near positive would be nothing more than a vexatious litigant. I hate being kept in the dark about this kind of thing.

I think the standard advice given when you're being sued, or even just being threatened with being sued, is to keep your mouth shut. So I'm not surprised.

I'm sure everyone agrees all this sucks and I have no doubt that they didn't want to do it, but sometimes your boss, or legal counsel, tell you to do something you don't want to do and you either do it or face the consequences. Some people talk like they had a choice and sure, quitting would be an option, but would we want that from them? I certainly wouldn't. Sometimes you do what you have to do to survive and fight another day.

[SB1985]

I'm still kind of confused. I do not care one bit about losing *** from the game as far as the naming rights on the teams or even logos because I create a fictional japanese league but use the players included from ootp on those teams to avoid creating fictional players. So if I never patched my game and am still using a previous download, when I open my save will those players in my fictional league that were real players be scrubbed? I am mostly just worried about creating future fictional japanese players in their place or as I read earlier is Japan no longer included as an option to create players from? Sorry I am confused...